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Google Plus Isn't A Social Network

Google Plus is an attempt to harness the social web. (Image credit: AFP/Getty Images via @daylife)

I enjoyed Paul Tassi’s latest take on Google+, a service which Paul can’t envision becoming ”a serious competitor to Facebook.”

He’s right in many ways: the redesign itself is puzzling, leaving a sea of white space where no white space should be to the right of the content column (a trend in recent Google UI changes.) Meanwhile, the Plus stream is largely for techie types who have carved out something of a niche in Google+.

By and large it feels very much like a Facebook imitator – where none of your real-life friends actually hang out. All of these are very big problems if you’re trying to build a mainstream social networking site.

You hopped onto a search engine, plugged in a search term, found what you were looking for and went your merry way. What you encountered online was largely the synthesis of your search terms and the algorithms of the big search engines like Google and Yahoo. Beyond that, you would wander through “portals” such as Yahoo or AOL, where whatever tidbits of information or news the portal operators wanted you to see would show up.

All that’s changed, gradually, with the rise of both traditional social media such as Facebook and Twitter, and less-traditional social media and link-sharing sites such as reddit. Participatory online media like Wikipedia, blogs, and other new media have made the internet largely a place where like-minded people can share information.

In other words, sharing and following and “liking” and so forth have become the primary way people gather and dispense information. Search is still a big part of the equation, but social is getting bigger. Autonomy online is quickly becoming a thing of the past.

Developing Social Skills

Why does all of this matter?

Well, for Google it matters because of how the company makes money. If autonomous search-based web-surfing is being replaced by social sharing, that represents a threat to Google’s bottom line. Pinterest is the new Google Image search; reddit and Facebook and StumbleUpon and hosts of other social sites are the new Google Search.

It’s much more important for Google to address this sea change in how people use the internet than it is to create a web service that mirrors Facebook.

Now, more than ever, Google needs to become a social brand instead of merely a search engine. Google Plus sets out to achieve this not by trying to become a Facebook-like social network, but by connecting Google’s many other services, including search, into one broad social experience – an experience that I imagine we are still in the early stages of, and that will grow and evolve over time.

Facebook has also expanded beyond merely its own home on the internet. Facebook comments are found all across the web, and other forms of Facebook integration are used across the internet to help target ads to specific users. The social web is useful for users who want more refined “search” results; it’s also good for content creators who want better advertisement bang for the buck.

In the end, we need to critique Google Plus on its own terms. Those terms can be a bit confusing, since by and large the site certainly looks like a failed attempt to mimic its biggest competitors. Whether Google’s foray into the social web will be successful is ultimately impossible to predict.

But Google+ isn’t just a social network. It’s something else entirely.

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I used Google Plus for a good six months. It was the only way to share stories on Reader after Google gutted Reader’s sharing feature. It’s just not the same, and I’ve stopped clicking on the share button in Reader. I enabled the share on Facebook option instead. Works for me.

Google is large enough that they will never please everyone, but they still have to keep changing to stay relevant. I agree losing Reader stinks, but its no different than when they angered some folks with forcing the Gmail changes. Yes, some people left and swore they’d never come back, but Google had to move ahead to suit the bigger picture, and unfortunately the small minority that have difference preferences than the masses must be overlooked else the company would be reduced to having to never fully update their products.

I’m sure Google is well aware of just how much of a negative impact losing Reader has caused, and evidently it was not a big enough impact to cause their to change direction. They will lose some folks, but I am sure they are gaining others to compensate else they’d have rushed to bring it back.

IMHO, G+ is app scaffolding to replace the haphazard array of tools and ladders we see elsewhere on Google and other web app providers and finally put things like Google Groups, nominally-sharable Google Map “My Places” and Google Calendars out of their misery. Google Apps Script just won’t become mainstream in its current incarnation as a Javascript implementation sitting on top of a spreadsheet.

Erik Kain, great article, but a few points I think you may be overlooking. You mentioned that you don’t know what Google is trying to do, but they have been saying the same thing since G+ opens its doors to the public. G+ is primarily intended as an identity for all its services. This makes perfect sense when you consider they are trying to add a social element to their searched. Prior to G+ they didn’t know who anyone was, but if they ultimately combined all their products whereby every user signs in with a G+ as a profile, then even if G+ isn’t used socially, it has at least achieved the main goal for Google.

That said, no doubt they want G+ to be used in the same manner as FB where people log in and keep the site open for hours at a time. But as you said, you need to critique it on its own terms and Google doesn’t consider G+ as a stand alone. Only the folks intent on critiquing G+ growth on a daily basis make this comparison (hey, writers have to write after all : ). But if you consider even when they combine Gmail and G+ together, the usage statistics would be considerably higher. Add in Youtube and suddenly you have a combined usage that is fairly significant.

Some will argue that’s not fair, but consider the opposite. Would you ever compare FB game usage separate from FB messaging or someone posting photos to FB? Of course not, because they are ALL FB usage. Well Google merely has their services separate for the time being, but given what they keep saying, there will be a time when they are all the same. You won’t be able to compare their usage separately because they will be inseparable. In everything that Google says publicly, this is how they are considering usage and success of G+. As a result, if you’re intent on comparing G+ to FB and want your assessment relevance down the road, it may make a lot more sense if you’re are going to compare to FB to use Google usage.

G+ isn’t just identity for Google services, through use of the rel=author tag it has the potential to become an identity for all the content that it indexes. This has a huge benefit in their push to surface quality content as an author’s reputation can become a significant ranking factor.

For people who are creating content online I would bet that spending the time now managing your Google plus reputation will pay dividends in the future.

I’ve noticed that my rankings for my personal brand (Rich Fisher) are through the roof since I’ve been active on G+. If you’re a consultant or professional of any stripe, you MUST be on G+ both personally and professionally, with the same naming conventions that you use on your business site. Period.